half of us care about people and the other half are racist, sexist assholes

“Well, what you call ‘po­lar­ized’ I call sim­ply just be­ing stu­pid, hate­ful, and aw­ful … This is not an at­tack on you or what you said at all but that’s why I avoid ac­cept­ing the po­lar­iza­tion ar­gu­ment. I don’t like to be po­si­tioned against a racist as polarity”
—from a note to a friend

“‘There’s noth­ing Har­ris could have done be­cause vot­ers pri­mar­i­ly care about their per­son­al fi­nances at the same time as be­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly il­lit­er­ate’ is kind of an un­sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion but here we are”
—Com­put­er Cowboy
 

Your av­er­age Amer­i­can does not have the knowl­edge or in­tel­lec­tu­al acu­men to form a le­git­i­mate opin­ion on for­eign pol­i­cy, the econ­o­my, im­mi­gra­tion, any of those in­trin­si­cal­ly com­plex top­ics that re­quire a lot more than the “qual­i­ty” of ed­u­ca­tion pro­vid­ed by the Amer­i­can pub­lic school system. 

This is by de­sign, it’s not a bug. 

Keep the pop­u­lace dumb, an­gry, and give them a scape­goat (im­mi­grants, fem­i­nists, POC, trans­gen­der peo­ple) and it’s easy to con­vince them that the prices of gas and eggs will come down some­how if you elect the man who has no idea how tar­iffs work and will de­port all the dirty peo­ple you hate who work at the egg farms. 

We can also lay the blame at the feet of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, who, at best, are painful­ly ig­no­rant to the most ex­treme ap­pli­ca­tion of the dic­tio­nary de­f­i­n­i­tion, or, at worst, are ei­ther com­plete­ly bat­shit in­sane or in­her­ent­ly evil. 

Sad­ly the tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty move­ment, fu­eled by self pro­claimed al­pha types like Elon Musk, Joe Ro­gan, and An­drew Tate, has mass ap­peal not only among white gen‑x men but no­tice­ably young Lati­no and black men, which is both in­fu­ri­at­ing and a to­tal fuck­ing tragedy. 

Sex­ism and misog­y­ny is in­sti­tu­tion­al and they run deep, the same as racism, and nei­ther can sim­ply be re­duced to “men hate women” any more than racism can be re­duced to worn out stereo­types of black people. 

When you com­bine all of it with gross ig­no­rance, this is what you get.
 

Four years ago

I was cel­e­brat­ing the pa­thet­ic vic­to­ry that was a Biden win. We’d fall­en pret­ty far by that point but holy shit we’ve gone sub­ter­ranean now.
 

One thing that re­al­ly dis­ap­points me is see­ing all the peo­ple who are still will­ing to give even an inch to their friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers who sup­port this guy and helped elect him. 

Amer­i­ca is full of a bunch of peo­ple who can’t get out of abu­sive re­la­tion­ships, and not all of them are marriages.

I know it’s not a choice I can make for peo­ple, and be­lieve me, I ab­solute­ly know from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence just how hard it is to cut some­one out. How much it hurts. 

What’s left to nav­i­gate af­ter the choice is made.
The sense of loss.
The questioning.
Did I do the right thing? 

The fear of re­gret and the temp­ta­tion to go back.
The guilt.

But hon­est­ly … in the end it re­al­ly is worth it. 

There are no words in my lex­i­con to ac­cu­rate­ly de­scribe how free­ing it is once you fi­nal­ly cut some­one tox­ic out of your life. It does not make you a bad per­son, a self­ish per­son, any of that. It makes you a sur­vivor and sets you free.
 

Like

I’m not even re­al­ly that much of an at risk de­mo­graph­ic oth­er than be­ing a woman who is se­cret­ly a lit­tle queer (lm­fao guess it’s not a se­cret any­more 🤣) but is very hap­pi­ly mar­ried to a man who I love dear­ly and I’m more than fine with that. 

But my own moth­er vot­ed for Trump in 2016. 

My moth­er, who once had an abortion.
My moth­er, who has a daugh­ter, me.
My moth­er, whose fa­ther – my grand­fa­ther – re­tired as a full bird colonel and stood on the deck of the Mighty Mo when MacArthur signed the doc­u­ment with Japan for them to surrender. 

My grand­fa­ther is one of the losers Trump disrespects.
My moth­er, who was mar­ried to a Viet­nam vet who suf­fered his whole life from what he en­dured there.
An­oth­er one of Trump’s losers. 

I’m not even trans or gay or a per­son of color.
I’m just a white woman who is pret­ty weird and is ca­pa­ble of get­ting preg­nant (un­for­tu­nate­ly).

When peo­ple vote for a can­di­date who will hurt you, those peo­ple are vot­ing to hurt you. 

It does not mat­ter if their pur­port­ed rea­son for vot­ing for him wasn’t about him want­i­ng to hurt you. They still chose some­one who made it very clear that they are go­ing to hurt you. You, the per­son your friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber sup­pos­ed­ly loves and cares about. And you may say to your­self, “But they didn’t want to hurt me.” They still did. “They didn’t know.” Prob­a­bly not true but even then, that doesn’t make it better. 

They will not save you when the chips are down. 

They will choose them­selves over you.
They have al­ready done that.
And I know that hurts and it’s painful and you wish it weren’t so. 

But it’s the truth.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2024 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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